Support was a major problem, but honestly Sony's handhelds had other issues going against them as well. In a lot of way, the PSP itself was like watching a redo of the Game Gear from back in the day. Sure Sony made stronger handhelds, but it cost them a lot of the major features that makes Nintendo handhelds better as actual handhelds such as better battery life, portability, durability, and even their games were not exactly built for the market. I honestly feel that Sony failed with their handhelds because marketed the systems to a player base that really didn't exist in any financially stable way, rather than tapping into the market that was already there.Originally Posted by Scotty_ffgamer
The PSP was a modest success, but I was surprised they tried again with the Vita, and even more confused that they didn't bother covering any of the weakness the PSP suffered from when designing the Vita. It wasn't just a matter of no one wanting to make games for it because it wasn't selling, technically the system has a far more robust library in Japan than in the rest of the world, but also because it was allegedly difficult to make games for it, and the type of games the system could support really didn't lend itself well for the portable market. Hurting things more was the rise of the actual mobile gaming market that even made Nintendo start questioning the future of the handheld market.So it's not surprising it failed when it was trying to crack Nintendo's nearly thirty year monopoly on the market and then losing even more ground to a third party that even has Nintendo sweating bullets.
I feel the real legacy of the Vita and what Sony tried to do with it can funnily enough be found in the Nintendo Switch itself which made cross play between console and handheld the main feature of the system, which Sony tried to do with both it's handhelds but never really got it off the ground as well due to having too much proprietary elements transforming the idea into a n expensive venture.
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